EA, Ubisoft agree to share downloadable libraries

When it comes to purchasing downloadable PC games, there's Steam and there's everyone else. Today, major changes happened in that "everyone else" part of that equation, though probably not large enough shifts to make Valve nervous just yet.

The biggest news is that Ubisoft has opened up its UPlay service (yes, the same one that has encountered so manyDRMproblems in the past) to third-party publishers for the first time. The service will now also distribute games from companies including Electronic Arts, Warner Bros., Bohemia Interactive, Telltale Games, Robot Entertainment, and many more. The company is celebrating this new expansion by offering a free game download to anyone who purchases a game costing $19.90 or more.

EA, for its part, has accepted Ubisoft games such as Assassin's Creed III and Farcry 3 onto its Origin service for the first time. This isn't such a massive event considering EA has been offering third-party games on Origin since late 2011, but it's still an important expansion for the service.

Ubisoft and EA each sharing their downloadable PC libraries represents a sort of detente in the battle for the estimated 30 percent of the downloadable games market Steam has left on the table. But it doesn't quite go far enough to really shake things up. Maybe if Ubisoft and EA had seen fit to merge their online stores into one mega-service, they could possibly make a play to attract the kind of exclusive and desirable content they'd need to seriously compete. One potential sticking point that could be holding up that kind of a merger: while EA is well known for withholding high-profile games like Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3, and Crysis 3 from Steam, Ubisoft seems to have no such reservations about putting all of its titles on Valve's service.

As it stands, the non-Steam PC downloads market will continue to be hopelessly fragmented. This isn't only between UPlay and Origin, but also between largely indistinguishable players like GamersGate, GameFly, Amazon, and GameStop (which purchased Stardock's Impulse in 2011 to gain an immediate foothold in downloadable games). All these services offer slightly different libraries and features, but separately none of them really provide any compelling differences from Steam's market leading, de facto standard. It's simply not enough to grab much of a market.

While services like GOG and Desura have carved out niches of their own by focusing on DRM-free classic and indie games, respectively, these other services are left fighting amongst themselves to see which one can out-Steam Steam itself. Banding together and presenting a unified front seems to be the best chance all of these digital storefronts have, but territorialism and inertia will likely prevent that from happening. Then again, if Ubisoft and EA can learn to share, as they have shown today, maybe there's some hope for change after all.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.